Final answer:
The middle 50% of a data set, referring to the central half, is known as the interquartile range (IQR), which is option b.) interquartile range.
Step-by-step explanation:
The middle 50% of a data set, which refers to the central half of the data, is known as the interquartile range (IQR).
The interquartile range is found by subtracting the first quartile (Q1), or the 25th percentile, from the third quartile (Q3), or the 75th percentile.
Therefore, the answer to the question is option b.) interquartile range. In any given dataset, each quartile contains approximately 25% of the data points.